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= Carol Shanesy = Carol Shanesy (born March 1937) is an American applied mathematician and computer systems engineer. She is known for publishing many works relating to her specialization in CICS (Customer Information Control System) and pioneering real-world applications of computer science. After graduating from Denison University in 1958 and Northwestern University in 1959, Shanesy spent most of her career at IBM (International Business Machines Corporation), a multinational computer hardware and information technology company. She briefly left IBM to pursue a career with RAND Corporation in 1969, but she later returned to IBM in 1972 as a Systems Engineer.

Personal Life
Carol Shanesy was raised as an only child in Evanston, IL. Her mother, Dorothy Shanesy, first worked as a substitute secretary for different doctors in the area. While Shanesy was in high school, her mother transitioned to working for Kingsport Press, a book manufacturer, before working under Dr. Abraham Charnes, a mathematics operations research professor at Northwestern University.

Harold Shanesy, her father, worked for the Department of Agriculture. He regretted his decision to forgo a college education, feeling it handicapped him, so from a young age, Shanesy was encouraged to attend college. Although the social norm at the time was for women to end up in teaching jobs and have families, her family never put that sort of pressure on her. Throughout her life, Shanesy was married and divorced once and never had children.

Education
Shanesy attended Denison University from 1954 to 1958. During this time, she majored in Mathematics and was affiliated with Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Shanesy then pursued a Master of Arts Degree in Mathematics at Northwestern University, which she completed in 1959. While at Northwestern, she met an IBM recruiter through a gathering hosted by one of her professors. Although she had no plans of moving to New York to work at IBM at the time, the recruiter eventually persuaded her to interview at New York. Shanesy ultimately accepted the job offer, beginning her lifelong career with IBM.

Early Career at IBM
Carol Shanesy worked at IBM for ten years, from 1959 to 1969. Although Shanesy did not have much exposure to programming through her undergraduate or graduate coursework, she was hired into a programming role in the IBM Research Division in Westchester County, New York. However, the job did require mathematical expertise, as she dealt with applied math, so her background proved helpful. Shanesy's first unit was small, with only about ten to twelve other employees.

Shanesy herself worked closely with Dr. Ralph Gomory, a pioneer of integer programming who would eventually become the head of Research at IBM. At the time, she and Gomory programmed in FORTRAN, an early coding language designed for scientific and mathematical applications, for the IBM 704, which played an instrumental role in the invention of integer programming. Gomory credits Shanesy for being a "wonderful programmer" on his team that led him to find an all-integer programming algorithm.

Although this discovery seemed like a breakthrough, Shanesy found that the computational performance of this algorithm was inferior to previous methods, after she was put in charge of running the early versions of the algorithm. The team subsequently turned their attention to making the existing solution run faster, and Shanesy was constantly testing and changing aspects of her work. She recounted this experience, saying, "Dr. Gomory would have an idea for an algorithm, and we'd try it out, and we'd run some tests, and he'd say, 'No, let's try this; let's try that.'"

Career at RAND Corporation
After ten years at IBM, Shanesy transitioned to working at RAND Corporation, a move she notes was motivated by her "civic impulse." Shanesy stated, "I had wanted to do something. Those were the days of a lot of civil unrest, and a lot of attention to poverty, and particularly urban problems." She was first introduced to the organization by Gomory, who had worked there before moving to IBM in 1959. While at Rand, Shanesy worked with the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY) as a client.

She first worked on their large project that dealt with the concept of "slippery water," which is defined as "water containing minute quantities of a special chemical that enables it to flow with far less resistance and thus with much greater speed, than had previously been possible." This water would be used to put out fires.

Although this aspect of the project did not have a computing element, Shanesy also worked on optimizing the deployment of resources around New York. Specifically, she created a program that "allows a fire dispatcher to monitor protection in his locality on a real-time basis" as well as authored a manual for the Department to use.

Return to IBM
Upon her return to IBM in 1972, Shanesy worked as a Systems Engineer in the Public Sector Division. Her main client was the New York City Police Department (NYPD). First, she converted the old fingerprint identification system to a more robust version. Later, she designed a system entitled "Beta" for searching and identifying latent (partial) fingerprints efficiently, and this system directly allowed the NYPD to identify the criminal known as the "Bronx rapist" on May 10, 1979, by a single fingerprint left at the scene of the crime. As a result of this, Shanesy was honored by the NYPD for "outstanding assistance rendered the latent unit." Not only did her work aid in catching criminals through fingerprint analysis, but Shanesy also played a significant role in setting up the Computer Assisted Terminal Criminal Hunt (CATCH) computer, which contains a database of photographs of known criminals.

Specialization with CICS (Customer Information Control System)
After completing her early work with IBM, Shanesy began to specialize in Customer Information Control System (CICS) in 1984, which runs a large percentage of the commercial transactions in the world. CICS functions as transaction-processing middleware and runs on IBM mainframes. The software manages the access to application components, such as files, terminals, and queues, and enables programmers to write code that communicates with online databases without having to directly access those data sets. This provides a more secure layer of transaction between customers and providers.

The proliferation of CICS resulted in an enormous increase in productivity, as companies graduated from batch systems to online systems. According to Shanesy, "web service is not just a luxury for some businesses. It's a necessity to have a good presence, because some of their customers want to do business that way."

Shanesy has been developing CICS since its early stages. When CICS was first released, it only supported "macro-level" programming, which used assembler language macros. During the 1980s, Shanesy worked on a new version of CICS that promoted "command-level" programming and eventually contributed to newer programming styles, such as introducing support for Java.

As of 2001, Shanesy works on the CICS System 390 Team in the Center for Competence for CICS, which is located in Dallas, TX. Because she is based in New York, she works remotely.

Awards
In June 1979, Shanesy was granted a civilian's award by the NYPD for the instrumental role her fingerprint identification program played in capturing one of the most notorious criminals in New York at that time.

Publications and Contributions
Shanesy, Carol (June 1975). "An On-line Program for Relocating Fire-Fighting Resources." RAND Corporation.

Shanesy, Carol (August 1998). "Crossing CICS BRIDGES" (https://esj.com/articles/1998/08/13/crossing-cics-bridges-part-ii_633718609075392730.aspx). Enterprise Systems Journal.

Shanesy has also contributed to many publications relating to CICS, her specialty subject. In May 1998, she took part in the team that wrote the book CICS Transaction Server for OS/390: Web Interface and 3270 Bridge that can be found on the IBM Library Server. Several IBM redbooks, which are technical content developed and published by IBM's International Technical Support Organization (ITSO), have accredited her for her expertise as well. Published in March 2002, the authors of "Java Connectors for CICS: Featuring the J2EE Connector Architecture" thanked "Carol Shanesy, IBM Dallas for help with CICS 3270 questions." She was also acknowledged for "advice on CICS Web support" in "Architecting Web Access to CICS," a redbook that was published in October of 2002.